Archives for June, 2008

That family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities – that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional. – Laurie E. Colwin

It’s Monday night – time for new articles in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine: On the Emergence and Awareness of Auditory Objects: Anyone who has walked into a crowded reverberant nightclub, with a hubbub of multiple conversations amidst blaring music, will recall the initial impression of the sound as loud and undifferentiated noise. In short…

Britain’s Last Neanderthals Were More Sophisticated Than We Thought: An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe’s last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population – rather than communities on the verge of extinction. Microscopic ‘Clutch’ Puts Flagellum In…

The long awaited game Spore is coming out soon. The Creature Creator is now available, but a bunch of us got it in advance (see PZ, Brian, erv, Chad, Brian….) and got to play a little bit. I can’t wait for the game itself, although, as others have pointed out, the game is not really…

I grew up listening to her songs. Back in the winter of 1984/1985 she decided to break her long leave away from the concert scene and did an European tour. Nervous about the come-back, how she’ll perform, how she’ll be received, she decided to start the tour at an unimportant place, somewhere where she can…

Mad Hatter suggests an Alternative Careers blog. I like the idea a lot! I’ve been spending some time on FriendFeed, especially in the Life Scientists room. Cameron explains how it works. Dave Winer (who brought us blogging software, RSS and the concept of Unconference) has another good post about organization of conference sessions. He quips…

This should be interesting to all of us, be it people who study capabilities of online education or people who study teen online behavior. It also appears to be a part of gradual shift from media scares about “online predators” to a more serious look at what the Web is bringing to the new generations…

Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society’s whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic…